


Mixers

by Fahye



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:03:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/pseuds/Fahye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All of you shut up," Elizabeth told them, "and put on your paper hats."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mixers

"This is a stupid idea," said John.

"There are a _hundred_ more important things that our time could be devoted to," said Rodney. "By which of course I mean _my_ time."

"Humh," said Ronon.

Even Teyla looked pained. "Dr. Weir, I do not know if my people will -"

"All of you shut up," Elizabeth told them, "and put on your paper hats."

~

John was fairly sure that only Elizabeth Weir would have been able to convince an entire city full of highly intelligent people that _organised party games_ were the best way to reverse - what had she called it? - the worrying trend for personnel cliques emerging within their population.

Whatever.

The first party was dutifully held, and hats were dutifully worn - where the hell Elizabeth had been hiding _those_ , John had no idea - but he saw immediately what she had meant by clique problems; after the games, the Athosians hung awkwardly at the sidelines, and the scientists talked to the scientists, and the military talked to the military...with very little effort, John could have organised the social groups to form something like the Olympic rings. Blue with blue. Red with red. Weird...tawny brown colour with weird tawny brown colour. (That was the Athosians. John was of the opinion that they needed to discover denim, and fast.)

Finally John dragged Teyla into the middle of the impromptu dance floor by one wrist, ignoring her protests, and made her teach him some kind of shimmying Athosian dance. The cliques were still cliques. But it was a start, and Teyla was warm and laughing as she corrected his many mistakes, and he caught the gratitude on Elizabeth's face as she passed by.

~

Everyone was surprised when the second party was announced, but John had to admire Elizabeth's timing - they'd just wrapped up a week of quarantines and strict isolation measures after the city's biometric sensors detected a strain of bacteria that one of the field teams had brought back from an uninhabited rainforest planet, and something social and celebratory was exactly what they all needed.

"This is Weir." Elizabeth had dimmed the music and put herself on the speakers. "I'm glad you're all having a good time, but I can see far too many blue stripes talking to blue stripes, and the same goes for the rest of you. We can learn a lot from each other, but you have to be willing to take a _chance_." Her face was suddenly bare and earnest, stripped of cynicism and drenched in her unshakeable belief in all things good and diplomatic and free.

"Nazi," John said accusingly, leaning against the doorframe of the control centre.

She smiled at the floor and then looked at him. "Go and mingle, John. Share your offworld experiences with some of Teyla's people. I'm sure they'd appreciate your perspective."

"Hey," he said, raising his hands. "Black stripes. You: red stripes. I'm mingling."

Elizabeth laughed. "Nice try, John," she said, and bumped him with her shoulder as she left the room.

~

The third party was interrupted by some kind of technical emergency that went straight over John's head because it didn't involve weapons of any kind, but instead involved Zelenka and Rodney running around trying to out-yell each other, and moving fifty or so crystals from a transporter to a control panel to a jumper to the city's air-conditioning system, and eventually staring at John as though he was a ZPM and then grabbing his arms and practically handcuffing him to a hastily-assembled contraption that they assured him wasn't _very_ likely to explode and kill him.

"This is a really sucky party," he told Elizabeth, standing there like a particularly moronic statue while things lit up around him and Rodney, clearly stressed, comforted himself by insulting the intelligence of everyone else on the mission, and Beckett hovered worriedly nearby with a medical sensor to make sure that they weren't accidentally draining John's life or anything in the process.

Elizabeth just raised her eyebrows. "I think the various personnel are cooperating nicely, don't you?"

John wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of admitting anything of the sort, but...the people running to and fro at Zelenka's direction weren't just the lab staff, and he could see some Athosians helping to clear up the broken glass that had resulted from the first shuddering energy surge, and Rodney told Beckett that medicine wasn't a _real_ science only three times in four hours, which was probably a new record.

~

By the time the fourth party rolled around, John had to admit that the general atmosphere of the city was much more community-like. The jumpers were making more trips to and from the mainland as people visited new friends or asked to spend their free days in a different environment. And the loose groups of people at this party were multicoloured enough to satisfy even Elizabeth's determined eye.

John was leaning against one of the food tables when Rodney walked up to him, wearing a slightly glazed expression and clutching his cup of beer as though it were a Nobel Prize. "I think," he said slowly, "I just got hit on by a _soldier._ She didn't ask me to fix her gun. She didn't want to kick me in the head. She _touched_ me."

"Well done, McKay!" John clapped him on the back. "What are you doing over here, then?"

"Well, obviously I - I mean, it's not like -" Rodney's best _have you become MORE stupid since we last talked?_ expression struggled valiantly to remain on his face, but collapsed after a few moments. "Help?" he suggested eventually, in a small voice.

John fought down his initial impulse, which was to laugh for a very long time, and settled for a manly nod. "If she likes you, Rodney, she likes you. Just...try to let _her_ talk for a while, yeah?"

Rodney managed a bizarre hybrid of nodding and rolling his eyes, and John kicked him gently in the side of the leg until he snapped, "All right, all right, I'm going!" and walked back into the crowd.

"Well?"

John turned and found Elizabeth leaning on the same table, no drinks in her hands, her hat perched at a rakish angle that was quite endearing, really. Nobody else still wore the hats, but Elizabeth did, and John knew her well enough by now to realise that it was a subtle nose-thumbing and an even subtler _I told you so_. But he supposed they owed her that point, at least.

He lifted his cup and the side of his mouth in the same smooth motion. "All right. This was a good idea."

"What was that, Colonel?" She moved closer, her eyes sparkling dangerously as she looked out over the room; John was, abruptly - but not for the first time - very glad that Elizabeth Weir was on _their_ side.

"You heard me the first time," he said, and shot a smile sideways at her, so dark and bright and still in the centre of her world.

She smiled back.


End file.
